Facebook Prineville: Lot of Data, Lot of Green

'Simplicity Is the Key Here,' says Manager of Huge Data Center

PRINEVILLE, Ore. -- To realize just how big Facebook has become, think about this: One out of every 14 people in the world use it.

Now sit back and imagine what it would take to capture and communicate the billions upon billions of status updates, photo albums and friend requests.

Soon, all of that will happen every second of the day inside the company's data center in Prineville, and Facebook says it will do it using some of the most cutting-edge and energy efficient practices in the world.

"It's simplistic. Simplicity is the key here. Complexity creates waste and we have built specifically a simplistic, easy to use, low energy design," Site Manager Ken Patchett said during my recent visit.

Here is a video. Not a lot new, but interesting to see the story Facebook is building for its April 2011 opening.